Trying to get our schools sex education a bit more robust

emmy

This discussion was created from comments split from: Hi, I'm Gill, I'm a full-time PSHE Specialist.

emmy

Hi, Trying to get our schools sex education a bit more robust and comprehensive. Following on from your answers above, do you have any ideas for lower ability, non verbal and complex needs students - any sensory ideas to help them realise about public / private places, when not to touch etc. We also have some students who wouldn't understand pictures or the concept of public / private. Any ideas for resources generally for our less able students? Many thanks :-)

PSHEexpert

Hi Emmy and thank you for your questions - can I ask what age range your school is? The honest answer is that in my experience there aren't many "ready-made" resources that don't rely heavily on visual cues (obviously if anyone knows of any great ones please shout up!). Things I have used with some success with our more complex students include some of the video clips on BBC LearningZone; you don't say if there are any sensory disabilities or impairment to take into consideration but I have been very impressed with how well they have supported the sessions I am running; here is a link to the secondary age ones: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2VBs3NZkvhls2xbthdWD9qV/secondary
They are visual, but because they are animated it helps with setting them in context, and have aural and symbol-led reinforcement throughout (using Widgit). I wonder if those would be useful for you? With regards sensory resources for reinforcing things like public/private, that is a bit more difficult. I tend to do things like move around and use movement (as in, moving to appropriate spaces/places) to model where things are appropriate/inappropriate, and then perhaps you could use associative sensory prompts to reinforce that - do you think that would work for your students? Let me know what age you're working with if you can; hope that is a little bit of help?

emmy

Hi, Many thanks for that - I've never seen those clips, think they will be great for some of our students and to support lessons (whole school is 5 - 19yrs, but concentrating on 11yrs up at the moment). A lot of our students have complex / sensory needs and some also have physical disabilities. Modeling behaviour might also work with some who we are not sure understand symbols / pictures. Really helpful, thank you :-)